Editorials

The Supreme Court's judgment based on the Lodha Committee's recommendations for reforming the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have been described widely as being much-needed, landmark, and far-reaching. The court's wide-ranging order, it is hoped, will bring an end to BCCI's arrogance and the brazen manner in which the sporting monolith cared zilch for accountability, transparency and fairness. All three words were anathema to the over-aged mandarins running the apex cricket body...

It’s almost always a given that when development for the greater good of the greater number is unleashed on a nation, the first casualty is environment. Against the backdrop of this inconvenient truth, when a political party storms to power having canvassed on the plank of development, it is a cause for anxiety. This, in turn, needs to be seen in the light of the hapless condition that the Congress-led government left the country in. The economy is in a shambles, and the ecology has been...

BJP leader Narendra Modi had been pulling out many cards from up his sleeve in the frenetic run for the prime minister’s post. The last of the aces were pulled up in the holy city of Varanasi, where he played the Ganga card. The rhetoric was construed as a clarion call, and now all hearts are bleeding red for the river that has been polluted and damned by one and all. But like his contentious ‘Gujarat model of development’, this one needs closer scrutiny. Whether the man can indeed cleanse the...

Now that the unbridled frenzy over Earth Hour – the most-hyped annual event the world perfunctorily celebrates – has petered out, it is time to look at the tokenist event through a prism of sanity. When one talks of the world with a future in mind, it is important not to miss the big picture. Unfortunately, in spite of the unquestionably noble intention behind Earth Hour, it has degenerated into a mindless and ritualistic bash. It is a “lights out” carnival that keeps people in the dark about...

The United Nations climate panel seems condemned to the same inescapable fate as Cassandra of Greek mythology was. It has the power of prophecy, and the curse of never being believed. For close to 25 years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been documenting climate change and predicting the consequences of insatiable human over-consumption and reckless depredation of the environment. Except for scientists and activists in the know and understanding of things, the...

Discourses, when not rooted in ground realities, have an aberrant tendency to become fallacious, and end up being embarrassingly farcical. That's why chinwags about elections among the chattering classes often fail to predict the outcomes of elections. The reason why these discourses are so cerebrally vacuous is that they usually dwell more on non-issues, chose to emphasise needlessly on personalities over electoral realpolitik. Bangalore South is a case in point. It is reckoned to be a...

For roughly two weeks, a few weeks back, Bangaloreans in various parts of the city would wake up in the mornings to a pleasant surprise from the government. The main roads in their areas would have been tarred overnight, and it would be a fairly pleasant ride or drive to any other part in town. Over those two industrious weeks, most of the select roads were given, er, a fresh coat of tarred chips. The pressing reason for this routine work to be carried out on a war footing were well-nigh obvious...

Every few months or seasons, someone raises the undying issue of Bangalore's decaying nightlife and the exigent need to resuscitate it. This time it has been the Tourism Vision Group which, in its report to the Karnataka government last week, called for the dire need for the state capital to shed its embarrassing "boring" tag, and push the current 11pm deadline that brings life to a standstill by another two hours. The group that made the suggestion is high-profile, not one that can be dissed...

We Bangloreans need to rejoice. The pre-event hype and the subsequent glee, bordering almost on the hysterical, over the launch of WiFi hubs in the city give one the impression that all our problems on earth have been solved. But this euphoria can only be ephemeral, as one would soon realise that one's attention had been needlessly diverted. The back-breaking roads are still there, the non-existent foothpaths haven't reappeared, the stench of garbage has not been replaced by fresh air, and the...

The trouble with a knee-jerk reaction is that it not only fails to address a problem at hand, but complicates matters as well. The response of the Karnataka home minister KJ George to Wednesday's horrific attack on a woman at a Bangalore ATM is precisely that. The minister, in his infinite wisdom, has asked banks to post guards at these kiosks within three days, or shut them down. In his desperation to sound pro-active, George has failed to see a number of things. First, for a city with 2500...